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A review by chrisbiss
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
2.0
I'm reading all of the Discworld novels in order.
This is the first in the series I'm 100% sure I haven't read before and honestly I think I would have been happier to skip it. I didn't really enjoy this at all and it was a slog to get through compared to most of the others. I put this alongside Sourcery as a book that I actively disliked. That's not to say that it's bad - though I think objectively it's not as good as some of the others - it just wasn't for me.
It suffers from some of the same problems as sorcery. The opening section really grabbed me and I wanted to stay in that place. Teppic training as an assassin was a lot of fun and I was ready to read a whole urban assassin shenanigans novel. Once he returned to Djel it lost me and I was left wishing for a return to where we started.
Part of the problem is that, outside of the setting - which we haven't seen before - we're mostly retreading old ground here. The story of a hereditary ruler destined to serve but not fit for the job observed by the previous king from beyond death and ultimately replaced by a side character who turns out to be a royal bastard is one that we've already seen play out in Wyrd Sisters. Unfortunately for Pyramids, Wyrd Sisters is one of the best Discworld novels. This is not.
Pratchett also returns to using chapters (or named parts, at least) for the first time since The Colour of Magic. They don't really serve a purpose beyond having titles that refer to other books ("The Book of the New Sun" is the one that springs to mind immediately) and it's in that style of humour that I think we see the biggest regression here. With Wyrd Sisters we were starting to see some of the social commentary that Discworld will later become known for, beginning to step into satire rather than humour. Pyramids is very much back to puns and punchlines and it doesn't land. If you told me that this was written somewhere around the same time as The Light Fantastic I wouldn't be surprised. It feels like an Unseen University book with a different coat of paint and as I've already established, those books aren't really for me.
This is the first in the series I'm 100% sure I haven't read before and honestly I think I would have been happier to skip it. I didn't really enjoy this at all and it was a slog to get through compared to most of the others. I put this alongside Sourcery as a book that I actively disliked. That's not to say that it's bad - though I think objectively it's not as good as some of the others - it just wasn't for me.
It suffers from some of the same problems as sorcery. The opening section really grabbed me and I wanted to stay in that place. Teppic training as an assassin was a lot of fun and I was ready to read a whole urban assassin shenanigans novel. Once he returned to Djel it lost me and I was left wishing for a return to where we started.
Part of the problem is that, outside of the setting - which we haven't seen before - we're mostly retreading old ground here. The story of a hereditary ruler destined to serve but not fit for the job observed by the previous king from beyond death and ultimately replaced by a side character who turns out to be a royal bastard is one that we've already seen play out in Wyrd Sisters. Unfortunately for Pyramids, Wyrd Sisters is one of the best Discworld novels. This is not.
Pratchett also returns to using chapters (or named parts, at least) for the first time since The Colour of Magic. They don't really serve a purpose beyond having titles that refer to other books ("The Book of the New Sun" is the one that springs to mind immediately) and it's in that style of humour that I think we see the biggest regression here. With Wyrd Sisters we were starting to see some of the social commentary that Discworld will later become known for, beginning to step into satire rather than humour. Pyramids is very much back to puns and punchlines and it doesn't land. If you told me that this was written somewhere around the same time as The Light Fantastic I wouldn't be surprised. It feels like an Unseen University book with a different coat of paint and as I've already established, those books aren't really for me.